Share This On:

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) – A moth­er of two of Princes Town, who was framed by po­lice for co­caine traf­fick­ing af­ter they ex­tort­ed $100,000 from her hus­band, has been award­ed $240,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a 48-page judg­ment on Thurs­day, High Court judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed or­dered the dam­ages for An­isha Raf­fick, of Bor­de Narve Vil­lage, Princes Town, as she up­held her ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and false im­pris­on­ment claim against the State.

Mo­hammed said she found Raf­fick’s ver­sion of what tran­spired when she was ar­rest­ed in No­vem­ber 2013, more plau­si­ble than the po­lice.

In her claim, Raf­fick said that a dozen of­fi­cers knocked on the front door and told her fa­ther that they had a war­rant in the name of her hus­band Randy Lawrence to search for il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

She claimed that they were not shown the war­rant but al­lowed the of­fi­cers to search the house as she, her hus­band, their two daugh­ters, her par­ents and sib­lings wait­ed in the liv­ing room area.

With­in a minute of en­ter­ing the cou­ple’s bed­room, one of­fi­cer came out with a black bag which he claimed con­tained a large quan­ti­ty of co­caine.

Raf­fick ad­mit­ted that she claimed own­er­ship of the bag af­ter the of­fi­cers threat­ened to ar­rest and charge her en­tire fam­i­ly and take away her chil­dren. How­ev­er, both Raf­fick and her hus­band were ar­rest­ed.

She claimed that when they were tak­en to the po­lice sta­tion she was present when the of­fi­cers were de­mand­ing a $100,000 bribe from her hus­band to set him free.

She ad­mit­ted that her hus­band com­plied but the of­fi­cers were adamant that she had to still be charged for the drugs.

The charge against Raf­fick was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed in 2015 af­ter a cer­tifi­cate of analy­sis from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre re­vealed that the item con­tained in the bag was not co­caine or any oth­er il­le­gal drug.

In analysing the ev­i­dence in the case, Mo­hammed ruled that she be­lieved Raf­fick’s claim that the of­fi­cers had no war­rant at the time of the search as there were mul­ti­ple in­con­sis­ten­cies in the po­lice of­fi­cers’ ev­i­dence. The war­rant was al­so not pro­duced by the State in the case.

She al­so ruled that Raf­fick’s claim that the al­leged drugs were plant­ed by the of­fi­cers.

“I am sat­is­fied that there was co­gent and com­pelling ev­i­dence that the black plas­tic bag con­tain­ing the al­leged co­caine was plant­ed by the po­lice of­fi­cers who searched the mid­dle bed­room since they had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so as no oc­cu­pant from the house was present dur­ing the search of the mid­dle bed­room,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed al­so ruled that Raf­fick’s con­fes­sion was not le­git­i­mate.

“In my opin­ion, the on­ly rea­son­able con­tention is that of Raf­fick which is she on­ly made the con­fes­sion out of gear since based on one of the of­fi­cer’s state­ment her fam­i­ly was to be ar­rest­ed and her chil­dren was to be tak­en away by child ser­vices,” she said.

In deal­ing with the is­sue of the al­le­ga­tion of the bribe de­mand­ed from her hus­band, Mo­hammed not­ed that it was dif­fi­cult to prove as Lawrence did not tes­ti­fy in the case and there was no ev­id­nece of mon­ey be­ing paid.

How­ev­er, she said it was plau­si­ble based on the fact that Lawrence was ar­rest­ed even af­ter Raf­fick con­fessed and was re­leased an hour af­ter she was charged.

“It was high­ly sus­pi­cious that about an hour af­ter Raf­fick signed the con­fes­sion which she said was part of the agree­ment ar­rived in the room up­stairs that Lawrence was re­leased with­out charge giv­en that the al­leged co­caine was found in the mid­dle bed­room which he oc­cu­pied,” she said.

In al­so deal­ing with whether po­lice act­ed ma­li­cious­ly in charg­ing Raf­fick, Mo­hammed not­ed that his ap­proach in pros­e­cut­ing the case was lais­sez-faire.

In cal­cu­lat­ing com­pen­sa­tion for Raf­fick, Mo­hammed con­sid­ered the 11 days she spent on re­mand be­fore she was able to ac­cess bail.

While Raf­fick claimed that she was suf­fered hu­mil­i­a­tion and ridicule as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent, Mo­hammed not­ed that she did not ad­duce ev­i­dence to but­tress her claim.

Raf­fick was rep­re­sent­ed by Ganesh Sa­roop and Haresh Ram­nath while Ronelle Hinds and Kendra Mark rep­re­sent­ed the State.

St. Lucia News Online firmly discourages any commentary or statements that are libelous, disruptive in nature or incites others to violate our Terms of Use. Any submissions made on our comment section, are solely the views of the individual and not from St. Lucia News Online.

This article was posted in its entirety as received by stlucianewsonline.com.
This media house does not correct any spelling or grammatical error within press releases and commentaries.
The views expressed therein are not necessarily those of stlucianewsonline.com, its sponsors or advertisers.